BESAC President's Message
Hello BESAC Members and Friends,
I am writing to you all today with some tempered enthusiasm with respect to the momentum of re-opening and a return to "normal" due to the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in the Bay Area and throughout the country. I hope that everyone who reads this and is eligible has been vaccinated and is working to stop the spread with continued mask-wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing. Regrettably, due to concerns surrounding in-person events, we have elected to host only the Virtual Summer Welcome Event on Saturday, 8/14, from 11:00a.m. -12:30p.m. via Zoom and cancel the in-person event on Sunday, 8/15. We do look forward to having our next in-person event at Homecoming.
Today, Saturday, 8/14, I am hopeful that everyone can join us in welcoming new freshman and transfer students. There are approximately 150 new incoming Black students in STEM fields entering Cal this year! We are extremely excited to have them participate in the Summer Welcome Event and will be joined by several distinguished guests including the dean of the College of Engineering, Dr. Tsu-Jae King Liu, for the 2nd year in a row! This year we will also be joined by Dean Jenna Johnson-Hanks and Dean Richard Allen from the College of Letters and Science. We are also pleased to welcome Dr. Grace O'Connell, the new College of Engineering Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence.
So, please join us on today by registering via EventBrite to receive the secure Zoom link.
Miller Allen Ph.D.
BESAC President
Cal Alumni Association Update
California Magazine Highlight
WATCH: The Dragonfly and the Hammer (7 min)
BESAC Highlight
Dr. John S. Davis II
Dr. Davis devises solutions for protecting the privacy of Google’s end users and managing data responsibly. In previous roles he developed software for applied machine learning, speech recognition and electronic design automation systems. He has taught courses on machine learning, AWS and Hadoop/Spark, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications on digital privacy, cybersecurity and pervasive computing (e.g., IoT).
Davis is a senior privacy engineer at Google where he has published work to aid CoVID-19 researchers in datamining symptom search terms in Google while simultaneously protecting user privacy. He joined Google in 2019 after eight years as a senior information scientist at the Rand Corporation, and seven years as a staff researcher at IBM’s Watson Research Center.
Dr. Davis received a B.S. in Electrical engineering from Howard University. He then earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley where he studied concurrent and multi-threaded systems. He has led research projects at IBM Research and the RAND Corporation, resulting in several patents and coverage in news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal. Currently, as a Senior Privacy Engineer at Google, he focuses on designing privacy-protecting features into Google's products and services, and making privacy easier for users to control.
BGESS Highlights
George Moore is a Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate, concentrating in product design. Empowering marginalized communities and exploring sustainable design opportunities are the core of his work. Hence, he often uses and critiques frameworks related to Design Thinking and Life Cycle Analysis.
In his down time you’ll find him on the basketball court or at the closest open mic.
Mr. Moore is concentrating in product design. He is on a mission to thread a desire for empowering marginalized communities with a passion for sustainable design. He stays familiar, and critical, of frameworks like the Human-centered Design process and Life Cycle Analysis. His masters thesis discussed the embodied environmental impacts of manufacturing tools — specifically digital fabrication tools such as those seen in Fablabs and Makerspaces.
Go to the Berkeley Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students Facebook page for highlights and updates.
BESSA Highlights
Go to the Black Engineering and Science Student Association website for highlights and updates.
BESF Highlights
Kosa Goucher-Lambert is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an Affiliate Faculty member in the Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation and the Berkeley Institute of Design. Kosa received his B.A. (2011) in Physics from Occidental College, and his M.S. (2014) and Ph.D. (2017) in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His primary research interests focus on understanding decision-making processes in engineering design using a combination of mathematical analyses, computational modeling, human cognitive studies, and neuroimaging approaches. Kosa was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2014 ASME IDETC Design Theory and Methodology Best Paper Award, 2015, 2017, and 2019 International Conference on Engineering Design Reviewers Favorite Award, and 2019 Excellence in Design Science Award. Kosa primarily teaches courses on integrated product development, with an emphasis on complex socio-technical challenges.
The Cognition and Computation in Design (Co-Design) Lab, led by Dr. Kosa Goucher-Lambert, is a multidisciplinary research group at UC Berkeley, housed primarily in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and affiliated with the Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation and Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD). READ MORE ...
Black Engineering and Science Faculty (BESF)
There is currently a historic number of Black Engineering and Science Faculty at Cal. Learn more about Black STEM faculty by checking out the Black Engineering and Science Faculty slides